Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Exfoliating with a Follett face towel (with Andrew Billen)

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

’Twas the penultimate Off Air episode of the year, and all through the studio… it was anything but quiet. Fi chats yacht showrooms, Christmas haikus, rock star merch, and some very niche sex spots. Plus, Andrew Billen - journalist, feature writer, and celebrity interviewer at The Times - looks back on his year at the paper and remembers some of the interviewees we sadly lost in 2025. You can listen to our 'I've got the house to myself' playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2MkG0A4kkX74TJuVKUPAuJIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producers: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No, don't worry. People are very forgiving of all of our sins and don't worry at all. Good afternoon, everybody. In fact, is it? Yes, it is. Good afternoon, everybody. Whoa, it's Wednesday. And we continue the podcast this week.

You're very welcome aboard. Our email remains the same. and fee at times dot radio i've gone into on-air mode there's slightly different tone of voice never really stopped a pause do a time check into a tape that's all you need to know really that's not what this is this is the glorious mess that is the off-air podcast and it is me and the eve in the studio for you today hello eve now eve was just saying that she didn't want to do something well can we put our positive hat on got my positive thinking cap on Andrew has kindly written in

and he did a task that was actually set for me and I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I hadn't completed the task that was set for me and that was to write a Christmas haiku but now I'm thinking Andrew's written such a lovely one or how else would I need to? Exactly, Eve. So you've been saved by the kindness of a man.

Bonnet's on, we're back in Jane Austen land. Would not be the first time. So is a hike, can a haiku be, three verses, or has Andrew done three for us? I think he's done three. He says in the email, here are three. And I'm glad, again, Andrew comes to the rescue because I did not know the answer to that question. Right, so would you like to do one now?

Thank you. Jingle bells at dawn, happiness this Christmas morn, reindeer prints on lawn. That's very good. And just let that hang in the air. Yes, I like that very much. And especially red in your very, very dulcet tones. Have you had any offers of commercial work using your voice? No, just doctors concerned. Doctor's concerned.

We always think that I should go and get checked. No, I do. I'll tell you for why. Because when you go to one of your festivals and you do singing, group singing at the weekend. Very much girl guides around campfire come by our singing. When you come back from those, sometimes you genuinely can't speak. So I'm wondering, I'm just thinking, is there a little poll?

and I want you to get it checked out. It's just a paternal concern. I know. It's very sweet. Yeah. Anyway, please do if you've got an opportunity over the Christmas holidays. Now, I just want to slightly show our petticoats here because I love going through the inbox first thing in the morning.

It genuinely makes me very, very happy. About half the stuff that we get, half the traffic to the inbox is people in PR and marketing who are trying to tell us something. And nothing will get the goat of a producer or a presenter reading emails when somebody opens it and this is just a tip

putting it out there to all of you PR people who are listening don't start your email with telling us what our podcast needs you know the ones that go hi guys what you really need is and you read it and you go I don't think I do

actually if it's all the same to you but this one made me smile this morning because it is just so completely and utterly off-brand Hello Jane I mean that's off-brand for a start. None taken, mate. Hope you well. That's a little bit chummy, isn't it? Just getting in touch in case you're looking for a guest spokesperson in the run-up to Christmas.

Nick Hatfield, managing director at San Lorenzo UK, is available to speak on a timely story that challenges much of the current commentary around economic uncertainty and questions over London's future as a global base for wealth. San Lorenzo Yachts, the leaders of Italian, made-to-measure yacht since 1958 has announced the opening of a landmark London showroom on 61 Park Lane in Mayfair. And we've been invited along to it. Well, look, mate, you just couldn't have got it more wrong.

You're telling me you don't want to go to a yacht showroom. No, and out of all of the things that I think would bind our listeners, if you were doing one of those speech bubbles, word association, mood board things, super yachts is not going to be on the off-air brand awareness. thing, is it? So you've just got that wrong and I don't ever want to hear from you again. We got one this morning in production that made Rosie full of her chair laughing. The opening line was, I'm coming to you. But you just did the email long. You could just see the first couple of others.

We're not that kind of podcast either. I'm sorry. We're really hot. We might be that kind of team. Yeah, sometimes. We are a little bit. And the title of the next email in front of me is, hold on to that oboe fee. No euphemisms, kneel is here. That can be more perfect. This one comes in from Catherine. It was listening to us.

Now, do you say in Hamble or on the handball? I'm going to go on the handball because it just actually, it's a bit yachty, isn't it? Maybe I've got that wrong. I was listening to Fiona, and you've talked about hobbies you had as a youngster and gave up when life got more interesting. Whilst I didn't dance, I did play the clarinet and piano as a youngster and dropped both when I left home. However, on retiring, I've now picked up both instruments after a gap of 40 years

and I'm playing more music than I ever did before. I play clarinet in a concert band. I played piano at even song. I've taken up the hand bells, which I play in two groups, and in a bell's orchestra. Life has never been more musical. I maybe haven't reached the standard I was before, Fee said she would regret, but I am loving making music again. Shout out to the Warsash band. We've two sold out concerts this weekend. Wow. That's good, isn't it?

That's very heartening. Yeah, very hardening. And I suppose you just have to rethink that bit. I mean, when you go back into your dance troupe in your retirement, I guess you've just got to say, I'm never going to be the standard I was before. But off we go. And I think it's just a confidence thing, isn't it,

of just thinking that everyone else in the room knows something or is ahead of you when actually they're really not and if you chat to them I mean they probably are ahead of me but everyone You could get back there and they're beat you

Yeah and everyone just wants to have a nice chat and a nice time and no one's taking it as seriously as you worry that they are Yeah definitely definitely So let's take courage from that Hello Fee and Jane and Amcentia

Christmas good wishes are coming in from Nikki Welding Totally empathise with Jane I'm heading the other way from up north this weekend to fancy London to enjoy an overheated weekend in my 91-year-old father's sheltered housing complex in a smaller-than-normal single bed with windows that only open an inch. I think Jane would have total sympathy with that experience, Nikki.

When I'm up north, I'm visiting his 89-year-old brother, Good Jeans, who's incarcerated in a social services rehab unit for Christmas. He's put on a stone in six weeks, as the nutritional offer seems to be exclusively pies, sausage rolls and jam roly polis onwards and upwards for us all in 2026 well Nikki our huge festive wishes to you you're doing a lot of travelling to go and really make some old people's Christmases there lady so good on you for doing that and we do pass on all of your good wishes to Jane and we are going to regroup on the podcast in January and we hope that everybody who's listening who's had kind of similar

experiences to what Jane's having at the moment. You know, take heart. We will do some debriefing and gather rounding in January. I've got an apology to make, but also, I think as we always say on this podcast, we're so, so happy to be part of a learning curve. And this one came in from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Yesterday, you sent your best wishes to your listeners in Australia, but why not to your Jewish listeners? I'm sure you didn't mean to be hurtful, but in the context that this, and of course we're talking about the Bondi Bay attack, our correspondent says in the context that this was a deliberate massacre of Jews at a Jewish gathering to celebrate a Jewish festival and that Jews around the world are terrified of what will happen next. It

seems like you're erasing what happened when you don't actually acknowledge it. You're not alone in this. Across the media, people have paid lip service to the horror without mentioning that it was an anti-Jewish attack. It's as if having sympathy for Jews is too controversial or too political. My friend in Australia says she's never felt like she's had to hide her Jewish identity as much as over the past year. And now it seems like the world also wants to hide the Jewish identity of the victims of Australia's worst-ever terrorist attack. I love the show and I know you're doing your best and it must be hard to juggle all of the touch points in a 15-second clip. but this is a terrible time for the Jewish people

so please be aware that your words or lack of do matter well I really appreciate you getting in touch with the podcast and you're right that I wouldn't ever want to cause any offence or hurt but the sin of omission is a good one to point out because in attempting or thinking that you're being inclusive by not marking you know who it was and why this was done you're absolutely right it does no favours to the Jewish community we need to call out anti-Semitism wherever we see it.

And do you know what, as soon as I read this email this morning, I listen quite closely to a couple of radio stations. As I always do, there's a different radio station on in every room in the house. And actually there isn't enough. Now a couple of days have passed. There isn't enough mention of Hanukkah of what the gathering was, of what the celebration means in the Jewish calendar. You know, these things are being dropped from our coverage.

and the concentration is now on the evil, evil men who did this and what they were trying to stand for. Stuff them. They don't stand for anything. So I really, really appreciate you getting in touch. Would you like to move on to Swiss sense of humour? Oh, and just before we leave that topic, anything that we say in the podcast that gets your goat,

we really appreciate you getting in touch because I think sometimes when you hear other people make a mistake and they get it corrected, we can all. all learn from it. Swiss sense of humour. Now this goes back to something we were talking about quite a long time ago, wasn't it? It does give me an opportunity to use an accent.

I just warm people. Surely not. You want to do some loud chores in about 30 seconds' time. This comes in from our Zurich correspondent, Seren. As background today at work, I got to eat the leg of a large bread scary figure who smokes a pipe. It's meant to be something to do with St. Nicholas

and should enchant children, not make you think of cannibalism. In Zurich, it's called the Gritty Banz, pronounced Gritty Bants, and the Miegros supermarket has been inspired to make a video of the Bantsman

getting into a Mercedes-Benz. Did you see what they've done there? A play on words with a scary bread monster. People love it, does the humour travel? Well, not even up the road to Basel, where they speak yet another obscure dialect of Swiss-German, and they call it the Gratty Mar. so the pun doesn't work.

In summary, Swiss humour is unintelligible to those who only speak high German and the jokes stay local according to my very limited understanding. Maybe a real Swiss will reply, enjoy. Do you know the German New Year tradition is to broadcast an ancient British comedy that no Brit has ever heard of, dinner for one?

I can't recommend it too highly. Now, that is a thing, isn't it? I've seen that mention before. You and I wouldn't know what dinner for one was, but it is on New Year's. year's day. Our German friends have told us about this. Imagine just going there for or going to Switzerland for Christmas. It sounds really disorientating for there as a Brit. Yeah. Yeah. Let's never go, Eve. I quite like it, though. Many of you have been enjoying

the great bed and breakfast challenge that sadly finished. I don't know why this is the last we're going to do on this. You're going to talk to Scott Brian about it today on the show. I'm like, I should have said actually, it's narrated very beautifully by Mariella Frost. Strup, our former colleague on this station. Yeah, and she does it, she does it very well. I could do it cheaper if you're listening, Channel 4. Simanifique comes in, I'll give that a bit more well, Eglon, Simenifique.

Hello, all, I can't merci you enough for bringing the Great B&B Challenge. To my attention, I'm currently only on Week De, so please don't let Les Chatt out of LaSac. My favourite bit so far are the guy from Barnsley, who can't stop folding things into animal shapes, and Julian, the linen-shirted French Om, who keeps popping up with a bunch of fresh

picked flowers and a flirty bon moe. All the contestants are likable, if not all well suited to running a bed and breakfast. And the judges are lovely. It's proper good telly. And Glim would like to add his name to the sorry things are a bit shitty at the moment, card for Jane. Judith has written in as well

with a little bit of kind of bed and breakfast hinterland. That's because she has been watching the programme and has very much felt that she has things to contribute because they've had a holiday home in France for 20 years. We used to call it to second tone pre-Brexit, but don't get me started. Well, Judith is one of our classier listeners, just more well-off as well. To begin with, says Judith. We welcomed a stream of guests like the open hatch of a roll-on, roll-off ferry.

Sheets were laundered in lavender, pillows were plumped, a little bottle of local muscat and fresh flowers left in the rooms. An array of French breakfast pastries were purloined from the boulangerie first thing. Excursions were planned. by the fifth round of visitors. I was plucking the odd hair off the old sheets and giving them a dousing of air freshener. Our drunk the muscat, leaflets about self-guided trips would have prominently, along with directions to the local bar.

And this is just at home. Our friends who run an actual bed and breakfast are totally knackered. It's relentless. They can never come out for social events as they have to be on hand for arrivals and queries. They're up at hideous o'clock to clean, garden, cook and primp. They can never enjoy their own pools, get to the beach or even go out for dinner together.

They don't employ staff as it eats into their meagre profits despite having a thriving turnover So for whoever wins this competition It could be a poisoned chalice You were astute to point out the difference In the atmosphere of the prize hotel And the practice ones The limousin is a different kettle of poissons

To the southern Doordoin If you notice, the colour of the stone is grey As were the skies There was barely a soul to be seen in that village And the market wasn't bustling or brimming over With lush colourful produce it was a bloke with a van in a car park and an English woman selling sausages

Judith says I can't wait to see who wins fingers tightly cross there will be a second series has got to be a second series Well your promo alone surely hasn't assured it I don't know why it hasn't come to the attention of the channel for PR people

we're really really doing your work for you over here quite a few people emailed in with a very very sensible query that how could these British citizens just go and live and work in the continental Europe because you're not allowed to do that anymore with Brexit they're going to have to come back for whatever it is

180 days out of 90. The follow-up series doesn't sound quite as inspiring just a bit depressing. At all. Their holiday days are expired and they have to go back. Well, maybe they'll have to do it so maybe they'll have to do it in this country. Oh, Cornwall somewhere.

Win a Bed and Boat. No, they don't want you. God. Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it? Very difficult. Should we just dwell on Paul Muskell from Moment, Eve? Please. When do we have the lovely Maggie O'Farrell actually on the podcast?

The 6th of January. And why is that relevant to a conversation about Paul Maskell? Because her novel, Hamlet, has just been adapted for a film that Paul Maskell stars in. Is he Billy Shakespeare? Yeah. Maggie? Yes, so Maggie and I've just had our little chat as a pre-record and it'll go out in mid-January. I think she's one of the most talented novelists of her generation.

The fact that she can turn her hand to so many novels with different backgrounds, places, characters, points in time. I think she's just a phenomenon and she's such a lovely person as well. And don't be put off going to see Hamnip because it is about an 11-year-old child who dies. But do note that it's about an 11-year-old child. who dies and that's not a spoiler alert because it's absolutely there in history it's fascinating and really enjoyable in so many ways but you you just need to know that that's that's going to happen it's one of the most emotional films i've ever seen and as i said yesterday i just had to go straight home from the west end to go and hug my children who were of course like just

go away no they didn't actually they were very sweet they couldn't believe that i'd miss the opportunity to just stay a little longer. I couldn't quite believe it. But, I mean, you saw Olivia Coleman. That's a big tip. Exactly. That did it for me. Yeah. I do get that. You had your star power for evening. And you know me, I don't like to lust after people. No, no. I'm much more, I'm the cerebral. Yes. You would not get fee, fan girling. Yeah. If you were going to be fangirling over anyone, it would be Maggie O'Farrell. It would. Yes, it was. You're absolutely right. It's, it's the other one who really is, she can't contain herself. Broney says, doing my post-work Christmas shopping on Oxford Street,

I had to pause to email in when you started chatting about the lovely Paul Mascar. Earlier today, we exchanged our not-so-secret Santa gifts at work. We're a team of three. That's not going to be a very long ceremony, than Brony. We all had to find a gift from TEMU with the budget of £5. Whilst I normally avoid the online emporium, it did make the smaller budget Secret Centre a lot more fun and creative. Please see attached the Paul Maskell blanket.

I bought for my friend Heather. Note, this gift ended up being almost double the budget, but needed the larger size for dramatic effect. Yes, you don't want to small Paul, do you? Worth every penny, as my friend Heather has decided to keep it as a work blanket in case either of us in the team gets chilly from the AC or we just need a hug from Paul. I'm now very glad I decided not to get the poor Messkell bathroom set.

I love that too, and also I know what I'm getting James Christmas. I love that he's just sort of like living under a desk somewhere in an office. Yes, but you could just get it. get him out. Just wrap yourself with Paul Muskell. I wonder, I mean, he's never going to, he's never going to see the royalties from the Paul Mescal towel and bathroom set, is he? Probably not from team you. No, from team you. But I'd be intrigued as to some of the other endorsed products that people have accumulated over the years, you know, where celebrities, a little bit up against it,

you know, have decided to, you know, I don't know what it would be. Has that culture kind of died out a bit, though, of people sort of getting collectors items of, you know, you could get a room and you could decorate your whole bedroom in a sort of merchandise of a superstar? I think it has, and I think it's a shame. I was wondering which side we'd fall on that. I'm not sure it is a shame. I think there was definitely a time where you could get a Steve Wright tie set for your dad or, you know, Keith Chegwin bubble bath or something. Do you think Rod saw any royalties for that Advent calendar? It wasn't an average calendar, just a normal calendar that Jane got you?

I think he didn't. I'm just going to say, I don't think the quality was quite. I'm not saying that Jane skimped on it. Slightly pictures. It's hanging in our green room area now. Is it? We need to get 2026, ma'am. Who are we going to pick for 2026?

We need to think of someone who's been a real kind of meme in our heads this year. We could take suggestions for that. We certainly could. Right, Eve, you've got to do this one. And then we're going to introduce the guest. I don't want to get embroiled in this controversy. Yes, I want you to get embroiled. Carla says, no, not wool lovers, woo lovers.

Like, woo-hoo, the struggle is real. Merry Christmas lovely is Carla. Okay, I'm just, Carla, okay, I'm going to have a fight with you over this, love. But there's no way it's woo lovers. Because if you say that to people, Carla, they're going to think it's a catalogue selling something completely different. You're not going to think I've got some very sensible roll-neck jumpers coming up. If you said someone, would you like to look through my woo lovers calendar and a catalogue, whatever it is?

I just think you're wrong. I just think you're wrong. I kind of like it, but she might be making it up. But you're wrong. I lied. I've got to do the nice email from people. Oh my gosh, Peter. Yeah, just Peter, the nice email from Peter.

First, my thoughts to Jane. It is astonishing how quickly life can be transformed by ill health, especially in festive times. Next, many thanks to Fee for so deptly mixing curiosity and scepticism in her interview with the AI entrepreneur, who should be nicknamed Upskill. Now, this was Eileen van der Velden talking about her creation, Tilly Norwood. Peter says this resonated very much with my work as an archivist and educational. in library and information science in which I'm trying hard to convince my students

not to do the very thing your guest sees as a moral imperative to feed more and more data into the more of big tech. I love that word more. M.A.W. More. In the absence of any regulations or ethical guardrails, imagine it the 13 billion pages of records in the US National Archives

were transformed into, say, 100 billion pages of credible-looking fake documents. To be sure, I do not. discount the potential of AI to achieve historic breakthroughs in science and even the humanities. But what I see in my young students today is a longing for authenticity and a bit of quiet respite from Silicon Valley's zero-sum lunacy. I'm sure they'd like your show. I'd recommend it to them, but they rarely take my advice. Keep up the good work and vital work of bot-free conversation. And Peter, I was just heartened to read all of that because ultimately it will only be

and the choices that we all make about AI, that we can define what we want AI to be, yes? And on that, tomorrow, our guest... It's such a smooth link. It really is. So tomorrow, our guest is Chris McCausland and his documentary, which is about how he is using modern tech and AI, to really transform his life as a blind person, was recommended to us by several listeners in our conversations about AI, where we are just holding our head and our hands, aren't we, about the future? Chris McCausen's perspective is fascinating and we've already done that interview too.

I know. Haven't we worked hard than three people? I wanted to make sure we could just put our feet up tomorrow. And he left both of us in a different mindset to how we were before we'd talked to him, which is fantastic actually. It was quite refreshing. Yeah, very refreshing. So that comes your way tomorrow.

I just want to do Peter's P.S. And then we will get to today's guest, I promise. I laugh when I heard your Thanksgiving episode when you made a quizzical remark about marshmallows. You weren't wrong to question why Americans would be nostalgic about a dish featuring sugar three ways. Funniest still is the cranberry jelly, which must be served in the moulded shape of the can

in which it arrived from the supermarket. Remove that bloop from the festive table and Americans will look sad, though they never eat it. who would I didn't know that Peter so you just have a kind of you just have a moulded scound shaped stack on the table

I don't suppose people would be would they be a little bit frightened of being the first one to dip into the maybe that's why no one has it it's just bizarre I've never heard of that too well gosh we're definitely on a very very very steep learning curve today

I've just had a thought about the calendar oh yeah Ken Follett Ken Follett Ken Follett Should we get Jane a Ken Follett Gallant? Genius. Right.

Looking that up during the guest. Firing up, team you. Oh, you see, this is where I'm so, so hoping there's a Ken Follett towel or some, if we could find, let's face it, if we could find. Jane drawing ourselves. Ken Follett. Bathroom set. Then that is job made done over. Oh, gosh.

I think that might be too much from my mind. Ken's solid at bubble bath. Love it. She'd love it. We are interviewing the interviewer now for the next half hour, one of the best in the business. Andrew Billen has 40 years of experience getting interviews with celebrities, politicians and writers.

Just this year, the actor David Soucher admitted to Andrew he wasn't the easiest to work with. Zach Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, told him the Prime Minister was running scared. presenter Steph McGovern told him about how she was stalked, and the comedian Paul Merton was prepared to explain how his wife died and how he then went through heartbreak and found love again. That's just some of many. It's not an uncomplicated job these days. Sometimes before you hear an interview here on Times Radio

or rerun in the paper, there has been quite a bit of back and forth between the interviewee and the celebrity's PR team about their often very specific requirements. Well, do you ignore the agreements once the interview started or give up on the idea of the interview altogether? Today, we're going to turn the tables and ask Andrew to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the realities of reporting on celebrities and what it is like travelling the country to sit at coffee tables or their homes with various famous faces. Here's a look back across the year at the people he's met and the people we've lost, feature writer for the Times, Andrew is here. Andrew, good afternoon. Good afternoon. It's a very weird position to be in, suddenly to have to answer the questions.

And there is a wealth of things we could ask you about because I went on the Times app and you can search by an, author, so I put your name in to sort of have a look at who you'd interviewed, there were over 2,700 articles that came up. That can't be true. It's true. Unless there's an error with how it's accounting for on the app, I thought, my goodness, where do we start? So can you just give us a little bit of a behind the scenes of the last year really and the process you go through in trying to get one of those celebrities or politicians or people who've been in the news to trust you to actually tell them your story? Well, there are two stages. And the first stage I'm not really involved with. I do have ideas about who I'd like to interview

and sometimes they happen, but really they're prepared by my editors who work incredibly hard to persuade PRs generally to let me interview their clients. And I sometimes see the email trail and there might be 30 or 40 emails actually to get this one hour session I finally get with this person who probably everybody wants to talk to and probably doesn't particularly want to talk to anybody, him or herself. There's always a bit of a quid pro quo, isn't there? They want to sell something or promote something and you want the story. When are there just demands that you think this is actually unworkable?

I was doing Vic Reeves a year ago and he was going to be talking about this program on bird watching and painting birds, which was fine and I was certainly going to ask him about it. but it became apparent on the train down through his PR who I don't blame at all that he really just didn't want to talk about anything else so when I got there it was it was sticky and I always ask about the product because I understand as you say it's a quid pro quo and also it's the latest thing they've done and when you meet somebody you haven't seen for a while we don't know you usually say what are you been doing today what's your next project but then I have to plow I

I have to professionally plow on because I'm not just there to have a coffee and a nice chat and become friends. You're not writing an advert. I'm not writing an advert. Nor do I need a new friend. So I'm there to get some interesting stuff and it wasn't unreasonable I felt to ask about his previous career

is this very extraordinary cult comedian. He's doing this very gentle thing now with birds and painting and it's a beautiful programme. But some of the vicaries and Bob Mortimer's stuff was very, it was quite violent and nasty and weird and of course I wanted to get into that and so you, it was a frankly uncomfortable hour but I think in the end the PRs were pleased with it

and my editor was pleased enough. How much has that whole process changed in the time that you've been working? I think you sort of step back and the motor of it is a bit different now. When I was on the observation, in the 90s, I could be flown out to New York

to interview Mel Gibson and then go over to the West Coast and interview Shirley McLean. They both had products to sell, Braveheart and her latest biography, I think, autobiography. They had to do that if they wanted people to know about their book

or their film. They had to go through the press. And that was at risk. I got into a row with Shirley McLean and whether she or didn't really believe in little green men we had been visited by aliens and Mel wanted to talk obviously about Braveheart

I wanted to touch on his alcoholism but there was an understanding that you couldn't have the plug without the story but since then what's changed in the last 10 years is there's a much much easier way to get people to know about your movie your new book, you do a 10-second TikTok and it goes viral or you do a controversial tweet

or a photograph goes big on Instagram. No, you don't then have to put your client in front of a skeptical, maybe cynical journalist who's trying to wriggle out bits of these people's lives that they don't want to divulge. So that's fascinating, isn't it? because it tells us something about the people who do still agree to sitting down with Andrew Billen for an hour or so. What do you think that thing is? I think some of them like talking about themselves.

Authors are very good. I think you might have discovered this because they sit behind a laptop for 18 months writing their book. It's a very solitary, lonely life. And then you get somebody who wants to come along and talk about their life and their book. They want to talk generally. they've got a lot to say

and they're not asked about it all that often. So that's certainly one motive. I interviewed Hannah Frye, the I'd say call it the TV scientist. A brilliant woman, probably the most brilliant person I interviewed this year. And we were about, and this happened sometimes. After about five or ten minutes,

she said, this feels like therapy. And I apologised. But she said, no, that's good. Let's go on. let's go into this. How did this introvert little girl become this massively popular, famous scientist?

And where did the confidence come from? And it turned out the confidence came from having got a PhD in fluid dynamics, I think, from Cambridge. Yeah, and she said, don't patronise me, I think, look, I've got this incredible PhD. It was, I read that in your piece. She did she say, don't patronise me to me.

No, to the audience. To the audience. She was patronised appallingly. She has been, yeah. Well, you teased that out brilliantly. You have a different experience of interviewing than we do have it in the radio studio because you're sat right in front of someone with a microphone. If you do have that awkward moment,

I can't remember the adjective that you used before, but it was so good when you said it got, I can't remember like there was a squeeze or felt uncomfortable. You also have a more privileged position in some ways because you have got time to think about it, to write it down, and you don't have to deliver it right in front of them. So if you've got a slightly unfavorable, thing to say. You can. What are you weighing up if you're going to write something that isn't

going to put someone in the best light or the light they were imagining? I think it's changed over my career. As you've put it out, I've been doing it for decades now, probably 30 years, 35 years as an interviewer on national newspapers. When I joined that sort of strange gang of celebrity interviewers, the chief among us was a woman called Lynn Barber who was famous for the viciousness of her interviews and her willingness to say anything bad. And

in a strange way, people were attracted to this because they thought, can I, can I woo this woman? Can I get her to say something nice and out of me in print? So I think I was slightly, I think most of us were slightly over-influenced by that. And gradually you learn that that's

not, for me anyway, the best way to get stuff out of people. But how would I like it to be treated like a monster because monsters come from somewhere and I wouldn't say I tried to make it more like a conversation because I think in a way that's

dishonest but I do think I try to come in with less an agenda and better questions and that's something I learned from this programme actually because the questions asked by Fia and Jane and I'm sure by you Rosie

and they have been so already are original come at a different angle and that can slightly crack people open and they can be really revealing if you were right, ask and bother to prepare the right question.

It's a very nice thing he's just said, isn't it? Do you think he's warming us up before we write something absolutely terrible about us? Do you know, the funny thing about Lynn Barber, Andrew, I interviewed her because she had a book out, didn't she,

wrote her memoir about her extraordinary childhood. I expected her to be slightly different in the flesh because I thought maybe her skewering of people was what she did at work. It was her day job. But it was absolutely her, actually, wasn't it? And it was one of the most uncomfortable interviews I think I've ever had to do because she just wasn't interested in the kind of fluff around anything, was she?

She was just like, nope, don't want to answer that. Nope, you've asked that wrong. It was just blooming terrifying. That's right, this is going much better, I hope, so far. Can we talk about some of the people that you've met this year? Because when you interview people, when that person, you know, is in our sight line, it is for a reason it tells us something about our times. And actually, we were talking just before we came on air about an interview that you did with Kate Clanchie,

which I think really does tell a story of something that's happened over the last five years or so. So tell us a little bit about her. Yes, well, I interviewed Kate Clanchie in 2019, I think. and she'd just published, it was about to publish a memoir. And it was about her experience as a teacher in Oxford teaching poetry

to refugees, asylum seekers from boys and girls from Africa. And she was being hailed as an absolute miracle worker. She was getting this fantastic poetry out of these young people who came, as she pointed out,

from great storytelling traditions themselves that she was she was ignorant of and then learned about and she went that book went on to win the Orwell Prize and then in I think it was the first summer of lockdown things meant completely mad a group of people a very small group of people three of them female authors of some kind of I think background accused of racism they use this terrible phrase white Saviour Complex. And within a few weeks, her career was pretty much destroyed. The publishers, her publishers, sided with the critics. They apologised several times to them for the offence caused.

Kate became extremely anxious and depressed by this, to the point where she came very near she didn't do attempting suicide by using pills that were in her bathroom because she'd been looking after her very sick and now dead parents she was saved by a phone call from a friend she then went to talk to her publishers because it's lockdown it was very hard to see anybody in person and I think that sort of exaggerated this moral panic she went to see them and to her horror

three of the most senior people in the publishing house, people who had refused to defend her, admitted they hadn't actually read the book, at which point she burst into tears. So I interviewed her again. We kept in touch. It's one of the things. I don't make friends from doing interviews,

but I do keep in touch with some of those people. And she got in touch with me a few months ago and said there is going to be a podcast about this. Would you like to interview me about my... my story and the reason we could do it was of course she had uncovered through agency of freedom of information all the emails that had been sent about the affair by her publishers and the public publicists and it was an extraordinary and appalling story and it ended up obviously the publishers didn't want to speak to me about it i put everything to them and on

practically the day i was finishing the piece i got an email five in the evening saying we've just talk to our chief executive, we're going to apologize. And it was a full apology, wasn't it? I rang Kate immediately. She was actually doing a tutorial and she was a judge of silence.

And she said, I've been waiting for this for four years. It is quite the story. By the way, anybody can go back and I'm just going to sound so corporate now. My apologies, if you've got a digital subscription, you can go back through the archive and you can

read Andrew's interviews all the people who we're talking about today. We do tend to contact you as well when people have died, Andrew, and I think that's the last time that we spoke to you on this program. And we lost Tom Stoppard. It's a very odd phrase

that, isn't it, we lost. Tom Stoppard died this year, and I know that you had interviewed him, met him several times during his lifetime. So how do you balance that personal sense of somebody going with the professional need

to then absolutely tell the truth about the whole of their life. There's a little bit more freedom, isn't there? Because they've died and they're not going to complain. But there's also a great tide of affection from me towards somebody like Tom Stoppard who was a

I don't need to say this. He was a great, great man but also a kind interviewer he used to be a journalist himself and it was a pleasure meeting him on both occasions. The problem was he didn't want to talk

about himself very much and on that first occasion which was when Shakespeare in Love came out the script of which he had written and went on to

Minoskers he wouldn't talk about his background at all and 20 years later when I see him again he's not

he's a little bit more forthcoming about how he checks Czechslovak in some of his child did in Singapore, India

and then comes over with a stepfather who doesn't seem like he was slightly more a forthcoming about that but not not all that much and anyway he was in a terrible mood because he had writer's block

and then he writes Leopoldstadt which is all about his family his Jewish backgrounds and I just realized when I put in the piece that he was right not to talk to me about all stuff because he's the word smith he's the guy with the insights and the talent and he wrote about himself himself in the years before he died what strategies do you use when you are face-to-face

with someone and you ask those questions and there is a real reluctance but the first thing you do is pause to see whether they're they're going to say anything more and then I say that that's interesting why don't you want to talk about that because sometimes the quote about why they won't give you a quote works as a quote and you try a couple more times and then you leave it and because I've got the luxury that you

two don't of having an hour not 10 minutes and sometimes they circle back and they say I do want to say something about that thing you asked me about and do you think as well that the job becomes easier the older you get just because you know more about everything that is

the human life Or maybe it gets harder because you lose the brashness of youth. What do you reckon? That's a typically brilliant question. I used to work with a fantastic photographer called Jane Bown, who was extremely nervous even in her 70s about taking a photograph. And I said, you've done this a thousand times, Jane. Why are you worried?

And she says, because I know what can go wrong. And I feel like that now. I have no idea how an interview is going to go. When you knock at the door, you go into the hotel room. You don't know if you're going to be met with an enthusiasm or hostility. So the worry factor doesn't decline. On the other hand, I think looking older, having grey hair, sometimes my interviews say, I used to read you and observe when I was growing up,

which makes me feel very, very old. I think they trust me a bit more. And I'm sure some people say I've stitched them up. But I hope more than would say, well, at least he quoted me accurately. Yeah, and I'm sure you would do that. We would never question that. I always love the location that people pick for these. It's surely best to be in someone's home where they're most comfortable, but maybe that's giving up quite a lot of themselves to let you see their house.

As we were saying earlier, when we were preparing for this programme, seeing someone's bathroom really does tell you quite a lot about them. They're always much more angry if you made fun of their bathroom than if you made fun of their careers in my experience. Because you used to do that a lot. you used to get invited to their homes. Whose homes have you seen? Whose homes have I seen?

Actresses, actresses, authors. I mean, the really big ones, like Mel Gibson, you'd see in a hotel or a restaurant. But, you know, Ian McKeown, for example, I think he's still happy for me to meet in his flat in London. And I regard him as a writer almost up there with, with stop art but it's great

they're a bit more relaxed and it's less easy for them to throw you out somehow because they're your host but it's got it happens less and less now it's much more controlled I hate having a PR in the room

I used to say if you're in the room and you'll be in the piece if you stop talking do they interfere or are there wide eyes in the background Occasion no say

I think we should move on or I was interviewing Woody Allen once and this PR kept saying back to the movie which was a shame because Woody Allen was quite happy to talk about his personal life And there's quite a lot to talk about There was lots to talk about

And weirdly enough Woody was happy enough to talk about it Who is the one that got away The person you've always wanted to interview But haven't got to I really wanted to interview David Letterman who was the late night a chat show host

on CBS for decades. He had a really interesting career. He'd been passed over for the top job, set up shop and another network.

And then gone into terrible trouble because he was blackmail for an affair he was having with a junior member of staff. I just thought

he had a fantastic story and he was a very complicated man who apparently was very funny but would agonise after every programme, play the tape, worry that he'd missed the joke

and all that. But he just didn't do interviews, really. We've had a message from Susan who says one of my favourite Andrew Billen articles was about himself and how he found love. That's very nice of her. Yeah.

If I'd wanted to be a columnist, I could have done a lot of that stuff to be about myself, but it doesn't really interest me as much as finding out about other people. But on the other hand, if the desk rings up and says, would you write about how you met your wife on online dating and she turned out to be another journalist and she turned out to be on a story, I'll happily write that piece because I don't have to do any research.

That's true. No background. Yeah, that's brilliant. No cuttings. Can you give us any glimpse of what's to come in 2026 interviews in the pipeline? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say. There we go. Only because I've got to go down and say, face my editor in a few minutes.

And if I say me, giving somebody to some of the paper, they may say, that's a good idea. But generally, I don't know. Thank you so much. Andrew Bill and it has been such a pleasure feature editor at the Times. And as we've said, yeah, head online. There's a lengthy archive of some fantastic interviews to look through. Andrew, thank you.

Thank you very much. But you know that the one that everyone's going to go for is the one about you. very happy Christmas too as well thank you for coming to see us Andrew Billen a colleague here on the Times and Sunday Times and I do think the notion of the modern interview is so completely different to how it was even 10 years ago let alone 30 years ago and I think if you went right back through Andrew Billen's archive it would really tell a story of our times

in terms of what people now choose to tell the world how people choose to portray themselves in the world. But I think he's still one of the best, best interviews around. So lovely to have him on the programme. Tomorrow, my lovely people, will be our last edition of Offer recorded live before Christmas. We are going to pop out some bits and pieces in the feed over the Christmas season. And it will be your chance to hear our interview from Cheltenham with Penny Lancaster,

which will go out on Christmas Day. Christmas Day. Christmas Day. What a stocking filler that is. So we hope that you'll be able to carry on chuntering through and, you know, we're with you. You can always dip back into the archive if you feel you need a little bit of escape. And can I highly recommend the I'm hiding in the cupboard at Christmas podcast playlist. I think it is the best yet. It's got some superb ones on it. The Pina Collada song, which is Rupert Holmes, which sometimes you hear Ken Bruce play this. that a lot, but you don't tend to hear it. It's got one of those lovely, we should do a compilation of the times that sex is mentioned in songs related to the time of day that sex is being had. It comes up more than you think. Will that be your job for Christmas? It is. Because he's making love at Midlight in the dunes on the Cape at one point. It's very specific. That's quite specific, niche. That's a very gritty. Goodbye. Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another off-air with Jane and Fee. Thank you.

If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. If you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB, or on the free Times Radio app. Offair is produced by Eve Salisbury, and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.